Sounds good, I may have to ask for the videos to be sent under a plain brown-paper wrapper and claim all the good bits came to me while meditating on a picture of Tohei, but I know you're big enough to understand that it's just you're not a one true aikidoka...

Interestingly enough, I was recently looking at that early Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido film (it's now on YouTube in 5 sections). I hadn't seen that film in many years and I only had a fuzzy memory of even seeing some of it at all. But my point is that when I saw that film years ago, even though I thought I was a clever dick at the time, I really didn't understand what Tohei was actually showing. At the risk of being a clever-dick again (although allow for the fact that I now have more experience doing these things than Tohei did at the time), let me make a couple of comments about what I can see in the vids. BTW... it's worth taking a look at the vids on YouTube.

The main thing I'd say is that Tohei had better-developed skills than I thought (during his prime). I.e., he must have done a *lot* of practice to develop his powers to the levels I can see them on that old film. He does try to do one or two things that I think he fails to pull off very well, but on the whole his powers are pretty well developed, within the spectrum of ki/kokyu skills in Aikido. Now I'm curious to see some big-dog from the Ki-Society who has the level of power that Tohei had at that time. I'm not aware of anyone, but then I'm fairly ignorant about the Ki Society. Anyone got a name?

Regardless, the first 2 sections of that series on YouTube are worth looking at for anyone in any style of Aikido. At the time the film was made, the split between Shin Shin Toistsu and Hombu Dojo was not all that pronounced, so it wouldn't be heretical for someone from another style to look.